Found an error?
Report now
Chancellor and US President got along well again in the Oval Office.
Image: dpa
As deep as the rift in transatlantic relations is, Merz and Trump get on well in person. In the Oval Office, however, the US President launched rhetorical attacks against European allies.
A firm handshake, a pat on the knee and lots of warm words. Despite all the substantive differences and upheavals in relations between Europe and the USA, from tariffs to Greenland and Ukraine, US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz are still getting along quite well.
That is one of the things that emerged from the three and a half hours that the Chancellor spent in the White House on Tuesday. However, his third visit to the USA as Chancellor did not go entirely smoothly. Five lessons learned from a total of 22 hours in Washington.
A "very successful man", an "excellent leader" who is doing a "great job" - just like during his inaugural visit in June last year, Trump flattered the chancellor. And he said what he particularly likes about him: That he is "pretty much the opposite" of his predecessor Angela Merkel (CDU), who Trump had to deal with during his first term in office. Back then, Germany was Trump's favorite opponent because it bought cheap Russian gas via the Nord Stream pipeline, didn't want to spend enough on the military and let hundreds of thousands of refugees into the country. Merz is different now, he says.
The Chancellor seems to be establishing himself as one of Trump's four favorite Europeans - alongside Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Trump thinks Germany's stance on the Iran war is "great" and refrains from calling for Germany to participate in the military action. "We are not asking them to send ground troops or do anything like that." After the meeting in the Oval Office, Merz said that neither Israel nor the USA had expressed any desire for military assistance.
The Chancellor had already made it clear before the trip that military involvement was out of the question for him. Although he had avoided criticizing the attack before his trip, he had not clearly backed it and pointed out the risks. Trump's understanding of the German position was therefore not necessarily to be expected.
Trump did, however, launch harsh attacks against the UK and Spain. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer initially refused to allow him to use a military base. He only relented on Sunday evening. Trump called this "shocking".
He was even tougher on Spain, which prohibited the USA from using the US bases on its territory for the airstrikes. "They were unfriendly." And that is why he instructed his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to "stop all deals" with Madrid. It initially remained unclear which agreements Trump was referring to.
Merz refrained from defending the two allies on the open stage. When asked, he even joined in the criticism of Spain - but only with regard to the country's refusal to adhere to the jointly agreed target for NATO defense spending.
With a harsh reaction, he would have risked an open confrontation with Trump. Behind closed doors, he then countered this, Merz later reported on ARD. "I told him very clearly: you can't conclude an isolated agreement with Germany or an agreement with the whole of Europe, but not Spain."
In the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine on a possible end to the war, the USA is currently mediating alone and Europe is standing on the sidelines. Merz wants to change this and has made this clear to Trump: "We are not prepared to accept an agreement that is negotiated over our heads."
It remains to be seen whether Trump will go along with this. In any case, no reaction has emerged from the meeting with Merz. We will only see whether the chancellor's appeal was successful when the negotiators sit down together again.
There was no progress on the tariff dispute between the EU and the USA. Trump reiterated his intention to introduce a global tariff of 15 percent on imports into the USA. His government is also continuing to investigate the possibility of imposing different tariffs on different countries.
Trump tried to counter European displeasure with a joke. Turning to US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, he said: "How do we treat Germany? I think you should hit them very, very hard." The US President slapped Merz on the knee.
The Chancellor preferred to remain silent on the subject. He went back into the Oval Office with the same strategy: Talk is silver, silence is golden. Merz only had three of the 33 minutes of speaking time in front of the cameras.
04.03.2026, 07:27
04.03.2026, 09:29
